Dinner in cambridge

Had dinner with some friends in Cambridge this weekend.  At a Mexican/South American restaurant. Couldn't bear the view.

Painting at Debden House

Last weekend Ben and I went away to a weekend painting class.

Ben enjoys painting so I found this weekend class on groupon for water color painting.  We stayed on the grounds and they provided all the meals (which were surprisingly good).

 

I'm not really much of a painter/artist.  But we were each enlisted to do a portrait of the person across from us. This is Yvonne.

And that's my picture of Yvonne.

We also did quite a bit of sketching and painting ivy leaves.

This is Theresa and Alen. Alen was actually pretty good already.

This is Luccia. She's originally from Bolivia. She was also very good.  You'll notice from these pictures that Ben and I were the youngest by at least a decade and maybe two.

I walked to the local village center with Theresa and Luccia on Saturday afternoon.

The scenery was beautiful.

It's springtime so the flowers were out in full bloom.

This was the entrance to a big fancy house right next to Epping forest. There's a sign that says that there are guard dogs and CCTV. Which just makes me want to climb the hedge even more to see what's on the other side. I never got that show "Cribs" until I came to England.

There are all these -what I'm sure are- castles behind hedges and big fences and I'm just really nosy. I'd like to see what's behind that fence. 

Back at the painting class, we learned a few new techniques with masking fluid.  

Mine are the middle two. 

The Saturday class also involved our attempts at painting bluebells. These are Alen and Yvonne's work.  Nice, right?

This is mine.

I got bored.

And I messed up the colors.

So I tried painting leaves from a Japanese Maple instead.

But that wasn't all that interesting either and I was getting frustrated by my lack of skill.

So I switched to something with straight lines.

I think I was annoying the teacher because she wanted us to paint lilacs:

But you can only paint so many flowers before you start to go a little crazy.

Sunday I mostly just sketched out on the beautiful lawn. They had an amazing park and the weather was perfect.

This Japanese Maple made me think of my Mom.

And here's the front of Debden house just in case you were wondering.

Trip to London (finally)

We finally got around to visiting London. 

Thank goodness!

I was starting to feel really depressed that our longest trip thus far had only been to Cambridge... and that was on my Birthday.

Ben planned this particular outing. 

We drove to one of the outlying tube stations and then rode the underground into the city.

If you get off at the Tower Hill station, you come out to some of the most amazing views.

This is the River Thames.

And the tower of London.

And one of the London Bridges that apparently did not fall down.

Or maybe it was rebuilt.

Who knows. 

Well, probably if you visit the museum that's right in the middle of the bridge, they explain the history. But we didn't have time because we had to make it to the "Jack the Ripper" tour.

That's right. We carelessly roamed the streets of Whitechapel looking at car parks where they found some dead people about a hundred years ago. 

It wasn't very spooky. 

The whole neighborhood is pretty Gentrified. Except for the part that's like a little Bangladesh. The street signs were in Bengali which threw me for a loop because the script looks really similar to Hindi and for a minute I thought I'd forgotten how to read.

But it was getting pretty dark and I so I didn't take any pictures. Believe me, you would have been disappointed anyway.

But here's a picture of the entrance to the Tower Hill Station at night.

Way more interesting than the car park where they found victim number 2, or 3 or someone. I don't remember because the guy kept going back and forth. It was confusing.

Eating camel at the pub down the street

Market day in bury

Last Saturday we finally made it to the market in bury st Edmund. That's the small market town down the road from our house. It's open on Wednesdays and Saturdays and has farm fresh produce, eggs, fresh fish and meat... And like any other market, a bunch of random crap... Which I failed to get a picture of. But I did get these other pictures that should make you jealous of our access to fresh produce and bread.

First house guest

Ben has been learning how to cook. 

Which coincided with our first houseguest. This is Ellie. 

She's a good friend's sister and now a friend to us as well. Which is good, because the house is still in a bit of disarray which she kindly chose not to notice.

Thanks for staying with us! Let's hope she's the first of many.

Playing pool with the locals

We went down to a village called Long Melford to see an antique shop whose business hours were listed on their website as 10:00am to closing time. Apparently that means 5:00 pm in the English country side. Which means we had about 5 minutes to look before they politely told us to get out.

So we wandered down the very picturesque main street and then ducked into a pub called the George and dragon. The promise of coffee for Ben and a pint for me (and some shelter from the East Anglia winds) was irresistible.

We watched some locals play pool and then Ben's offer to buy them a game led to him getting trounced twice. But I think it was amusing to the locals. We'll try the antique thing again tomorrow.

My office

So this is where I'll be living for the next three years. Yep, my office. I already have a general court martial next week. Just direct of two of the witnesses and the script but it's still going to be two days of sitting in court.

The new place

So the other place I'll be living is in a place called 2 The Old Flint Cottages. It's 400 years old.

The picture above is the master. Our bed will fit in the room. But will it fit up the stairs?

No closet but there is this little room that's going be my closet.

There are closets in the two other rooms. But they are kind of awkward. 

It's like we live in the land of I Love Lucy where guest rooms are stocked with twin size beds.

And also random sinks.

And I have to say... I love the bath tubs here. They are awesome.

Nice view from the guest room.

This is the entryway. The weird opening is where the boiler used to be. Don't know what we're going to do with that space yet.

This is what sold me on this place. 

That's a whole bunch of cabinets.

Now these shelves look like they're the perfect place to put some vintage Pyrex.

This is the living room. It's a little long and narrow.

And this is the dining room. Those are some antique chairs we bought on the equivalent of craigslist. Ben's going to refinish them.

And this is the outside. We're going to fence in the front yard so the dogs have a place to run around. 

Hopefully I'll have some time to post pictures when we get some furniture in there.